The historical fiction story, "The Grass Sweeper God" story.

BOOK HIGHLIGHTS

The historical fiction story by the author takes place in the backwoods of Appalachia coal mining country juxtaposed to NYC

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An unspeakable crime...

A family ripped apart...

As a nation divided collides…

Appalachia Coal VS. the NYC historical Stonewall Riots...

I am a southern writer who writes in the vein of Truman Capote, “Other Voices, Other Rooms.” Like Capote, I understand that there was never an end to American innocence because there never was an innocence to end. And like Capote’s main character, 13-year-old Joel Knox, who was “too pretty,” “too delicate,” “not looking like a real boy,” a main character from my novel, precocious, effeminate, gender-confused, fragile, articulate and unforgettable 16-year-old Smiley Hanlon, observes the world with a dry detachment and a wise sense of what is right, wrong, and just plain mean; a voice, albeit, self-indulgent that says more about gender-based biasness and violence than anyone since Dorothy Allison’s, “Bastard out of Carolina,” another saga set in the rural South.

Both books (The Grass Sweeper God & Bastard out of Carolina) center around a close knit family of drinking, fighting, womanizing with mental and physical cruelty to women forming a main theme—there’s even a pig-like, Moon Pie eating, RC Cola, "Five Star" Wine drinking, snuff dipping granny in “The Grass Sweeper God,” like the tobacco spitting granny in “Bastard out of Carolina,” both of whom were abusive.

LETTIE THE MATRIARCH

Lettie sits on the twin bed with the gun and the letter in her lap. She thinks about her children, Brac, Chad, Lydia & Smiley. She never owned them, never owned herself, and now they can choose their own road in life. But she can choose when to exit this world and how.

Appalachia Coal VS. NYC Modern Gay Movement

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Both Smiley and Lee become forces of change as do countless others. In 1969, Smiley Hanlon and his friend, Lee, emerge as leaders of a gay revolution, the historical Stonewall Riots. The riots are vicious but the real battle will be won or lost on another continent: Appalachia Coal, Solitude, Virginia.

Reviews

Top customer reviews

“The Grass Sweeper God” is a hard book to read, harder still to imagine someone living it. Ripped from the heart of what can only be an echo of personal experience and pain, this account speaks of unsinkable souls, lost identities and struggling to be who you are meant to be.